Jessica Hilda Mauboy (born 4 August 1989) is an Australian singer, songwriter and actress. Born and raised in Darwin, Northern Territory, she rose to fame in 2006 on the fourth season of Australian Idol, where she was runner-up and subsequently signed a recording contract with Sony Music Australia. After releasing a live album of her Idol performances and briefly being a member of the girl group Young Divas in 2007, Mauboy released her debut studio album, Been Waiting, the following year. It included her first number-one single, “Burn”, and became the second highest-selling Australian album of 2009, certified double platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA).

Her second studio album, Get ‘Em Girls (2010), showcased a harder-edged R&B sound, and produced four platinum singles. Her third studio album, Beautiful (2013), a mixture of dance-oriented tracks, R&B and pop, included the top-ten hits “Pop a Bottle (Fill Me Up)”, “Never Be the Same” and “Can I Get a Moment?”.

Aside from her music career, Mauboy has ventured into acting, with starring roles in the films Bran Nue Dae (2010), and The Sapphires (2012), which earned her the AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She returned to acting in 2016 in the lead role in the television drama series The Secret Daughter for two seasons. It was her first major TV role and was written especially for her. She released two soundtrack albums from the show, the first of which made her the first Indigenous artist with a number-one album on the ARIA Albums Chart. Her fourth studio album, Hilda (October 2019), debuted at number one.

Mauboy is one of Australia’s most successful female artists. She has achieved six top-ten albums (including two number-ones) and 16 top-twenty singles (including 9 top-ten hits). She has won two ARIA Music Awards from 25 nominations, and was ranked sixteenth on the Herald Sun’s list of the “100 Greatest Australian Singers of All Time”. She has collaborated with international artists such as Flo Rida, Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, Jay Sean, Pitbull and Jason Derulo. She has also toured with Beyoncé and Chris Brown, and performed at many notable events, including the Australian visits for Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, and US President Barack Obama. She was a guest performer at the second semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014. She competed for Australia at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest and reached 20th place. Since 2021, she has been a coach on The Voice Australia.

Mauboy was born in 1989 and raised in Darwin, Northern Territory. Her father, Ferdy, is an Indonesian-born electrician from West Timor. Her mother, Therese, is an Indigenous Australian from the Kuku Yalanji people of the rainforest regions of Far North Queensland. Mauboy has three older sisters, Sandra, Jenny and Catherine; and a younger sister, Sophia. From an early age, she was involved in the local church choir with her grandmother Harriett. Her home was described as the “noisiest house on the block”, with her mother often singing, her father playing guitar and the rest of the family displaying their passion for music. She attended Wulagi Primary School and Sanderson High School in Darwin. Jessica dropped out of school in year 11 to pursue her passion for music.

At age fourteen, Mauboy’s talents were exposed through the Telstra Road to Tamworth competition at the 2004 Tamworth Country Music Festival in Tamworth, New South Wales. As the first winner of the competition, she travelled to Sydney to perform and scored a recording deal with Sony Music Australia. She released a country-inspired rendition of the Cyndi Lauper hit “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. A video of the song was produced and released, but the song was unsuccessful and Mauboy returned to Darwin.

In 2006, Mauboy auditioned for the fourth season of Australian Idol in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, singing Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing”. Her audition impressed all three judges, and she progressed to the semifinals, then to the top twelve. The media cited her previous Sony contract as grounds for dismissal, but since it had expired, the producers refused to remove her from the show. In the final eleven week, following her rendition of Kelly Clarkson’s “Walk Away”, judge Kyle Sandilands commented on Mauboy’s weight, and said that if she wanted to succeed in the music industry, she should “lose the jelly belly”. Mauboy appeared stunned by the comment. In an interview with Who magazine’s Alicia Neil, two years after the comment, Mauboy said, “I kind of took it as a joke… I look back on it as a positive thing–it made me a stronger person.”

In the final ten-week, Mauboy received the first touchdown of the season from judge Mark Holden for her rendition of Christina Aguilera’s hit “Beautiful”. During the final nine-week, she had a sore throat that resulted in a mediocre rendition of Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise” and near-elimination, landing her in the bottom three. She never landed in the bottom three again, and ended up progressing to the final show with Damien Leith. At the grand finale on 27 November at the Sydney Opera House, Mauboy was voted runner-up to Leith. In December 2006, she signed a recording contract with Sony Music Australia, two weeks after Idol ended.